Ann Casey

Casey was born in Saraland, Alabama, one of nine children to John and Viola Casey.[1] John was of Irish ancestry; Viola claimed American Indian Blood—less than one eighth Creek Indian.[1] After the family moved to a Mississippi cotton farm, Casey attended school at Agricola, Mississippi.[1] Once she graduated, she married and had a son, but soon divorced.[1][2]

In 1962, while working at the ticket counter for a professional wrestling promotion, she met The Fabulous Moolah, who offered to train Casey to wrestle.[1][2] Casey soon decided to take Moolah up on her offer and moved to South Carolina to train.[1] Her first match was a tag team match that pitted her and Judy Grable against Rita Cortez and Brenda Scott that fall.[1] Casey also wrestled Miss Brenda in a two out of three falls match for the opening of a December 1962 card also featuring Fred Blassie.[3] While working under Moolah, Casey traveled all around the United States; she was also one of the first women to ever compete in a tag team match in the state of Hawaii.[1] While in Hawaii, Casey fell in love with a local champion surfer and took a brief hiatus from wrestling.[1]

Two years later, Casey returned to the continental United States and professional wrestling.[1] She worked for promoters Vince McMahon, Sr., Vince McMahon, Jr., and Leroy McGuirk.[1] During this time, she wrestled Donna Christanello at Madison Square Garden in New York.[1] In 1964, she had a match that pitted she and Penny Banner against Cora Combs and Kathy O'Brien.[1] The following year, she defeated Kay Noble in a match, but was defeated in another match by Bette Boucher.[1] She was also defeated by Mae Young in a 1968 NWA United States Women's Championship match.[1]

With Vivian Vachon as her partner, Casey defeated Donna Christanello and Cora Combs in a 1970 match.[1] In 1972, Casey discovered that her son had gotten involved in drug trafficking with a truck driver, and after she forced him to stop, the truck driver shot her six times.[1][2][4] Although the doctors told her that her professional wrestling career was over, Casey was able to wrestle again within several months.[1] In 1974, Moolah offered to let Casey win the USA Women's Wrestling Championship from her, and Casey was subsequently never defeated for the belt.[1] Later that year in December, Casey also won the vacated NWA United States Women's Championship by defeating Toni Rose in a match.[5] She held the championship for approximately four years before losing it to Joyce Grable.[5] Meanwhile, wrestling magazine Pro Wrestling Illustrated recognized Casey as the "Girl Wrestler of the Year" in 1975.

Casey remarried and had a daughter in the 1970s.[1] She still occasionally wrestled, and from 1980 to 1985, she worked for the Mississippi Forestry Commission.[1] Afterward, she received her paralegal license, as well as a bachelor's degree in criminal justice with a minor in psychology from the University of South Alabama.[1] After divorcing her second husband, she began working as a bail bondsman.[1] Subsequently, she opened a restaurant and drove trucks.[1]

Casey's last match occurred in 1990, when she defeated Judy Grable to retain the USA Women's Championship.[1] In 2004, she was honored by the Cauliflower Alley Club, an association for retired professional wrestlers.[6]

After retiring from the ring, Ann Casey wrote an autobiography titled ‘Autobiography of professional woman wrestler, Ann Casey: The Lady, The Life, The Legend.’[4] The book, made available as print-on-demand, comprises more than three volumes and is over 1,000 pages long. A shorter adaptation of Casey's autobiography appeared in Brooklyn-based sports magazine Victory Journal in December 2014 under the title "The Legend of Panther Girl", with the tagline "She fought to win. They shot to kill."[2]

Casey suffered a heart attack in 2005, and was hospitalized in later years. She died on March 1, 2021, at the age of 82.[7]

• Cauliflower Alley Club
  • Honoree (2004)[6]
• National Wrestling Alliance
  • NWA United States Women's Championship (1 time)[5]
• Pro Wrestling Illustrated
  • Girl Wrestler of the Year (1975)
• Other titles
  • USA Women's Wrestling Championship (1 time)[1]
  • Southern States Ladies Championship[1]
  • Mississippi State Ladies Championship[1]

• Teal, Scott Winston (2009). The History of professional wrestling, Volume 4. Scott Teal.

• Ann Casey's profile at Cagematch.net, Wrestlingdata.com, Internet Wrestling Database